In its simplest form, if and when you need hospital treatment, Private Health Insurance gives you the ability to make your own choice of doctor, hospital and type of room.
Medicare covers you for treatment as a public patient in a public hospital, under a doctor selected by the hospital and subject to their availability. So if your situation is not life-threatening, or you are looking for elective surgery, you may have to wait longer than is convenient for your work, family or social life.
As a private patient you choose the specialist who will treat you, and have greater freedom in scheduling, but this could become an expensive option - hence the need to cover yourself with an appropriate level of insurance.
With Private Health Insurance you can also cover yourself for non-Medicare components such as dental work, physiotherapy, spectacles and contact lenses, chiropractors, podiatry and many other categories of healthcare.
As with any insurance policy there are different levels of cover, for which different levels of premiums apply. The Health Funds offer many variations that effectively balance the amount you pay against the range of benefits you are eligible to receive.
All Health Funds offer options in Hospital Cover, Extras Cover (which are the add-ons that Medicare doesn't get involved in) and a combination of the two.
What you eventually buy from them will be a level of cover for the different items that largely matches your lifestyle. While there is no way to accurately predict whether or not you break a leg skiing, there are other items that you can be reasonably certain - such as pregnancy services, orthodontics and so on - and those that you feel more comfortable, such as chiropractic services or homeopathy.
Most Funds also offer some flexibility in the way that the risk is shared with you, through a process called "Excess" or "Co-Payments'.
The "right" policy for you is the one that most closely fits with your lifestyle and your financial circumstances. While you can never tell exactly what is around the corner (which is of course why you insure yourself in the first place), you are in the best position to sort out what is most important to you, what cannot apply to you at all, and what is a "nice to have".
At Moneytime, we start by showing you everything that the Health Funds have to offer. You can then look through the various categories, first crossing out those that quite clearly don't apply to you, then those that you feel might be "overkill" for you personally.
For example, if you are young, single and unattached you are less likely to be interested in cover for pregnancy, IVF treatment or hip replacement. But you might be keen to keep your options open on chiro, physio and naturopathy. And as your circumstances change, you will want to revise your coverage profile to include your partner and family.
Each time you "select out" an item, Moneytime narrows the search to only those policies that include the coverage you need.
If the resulting choice of policies appear to be outside your means, or even well within your budget, you can easily go back and refine your choice to find a better fit.
Don't forget also, that many Funds will allow you to lower your premium, in return for "sharing the risk" where you pay an agreed amount out of your own pocket for each hospital visit.
